“HABRI has put Ohio at the leading edge of coordinated HABs management compared to other state and even national counterparts,” said Beth Messer, acting chief of the Division of Drinking and Ground Waters for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA). “Being able to comment on the research projects from the proposal stage onward, we can make sure that the results will be applied and scalable—and often, we see water treatment plants are able to put preliminary data to use right away.”

HABRI is funded by the Ohio Department of Higher Education, with $4 million made available for two rounds of research funding (before matching funds by participating universities) since 2015. Ohio Sea Grant, which manages the research, is currently soliciting proposals for a third round of funding, which includes a $500,000 match from OEPA in addition to $2 million of ODHE funds.

“This is a complex issue, so we knew that we needed to attack it in an integrated way,” said ODHE Chancellor John Carey. “We put our university assets to work answering critical operational and policy questions that state agencies need to be able to protect the public and keep our water clean.”